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Coca-Cola: 'Don't approach bloggers with a fait accompli'

Brand should not approach bloggers with a "fait accompli" when reaching out to them, but should be open to co-creation and a more human approach, according to Coca-Cola GB head of media relations Sarah Tuke.

Blogging: brands should be more engaged with bloggers says Coca-Cola GB media chief

Tuke believes that by engaging mum bloggers with the development of its ‘recyclometer’ product, it made the tool "much better" than Coca-Cola could have made it without engaging the mothers.

Speaking at Mumsnet's Mumstock conference yesterday, Tuke said: "The lesson here for me was the role co-creation can play – we didn’t go to those mum bloggers with a fait accompli or a finished product, we went to them with an idea and asked them for their feedback."

Tuke also argued that even though blogger outreach falls within the digital marketing sphere, marketers should never "underestimate the power of meeting face to face as a way of building a relationship with a mum blogger".

Marketers should also tailor their approach when approaching each individual blogger and explained this was how it signed up blogger Tara Cain to promote Coke’s Work it Out calculator, according to Tuke.

After researching Cain’s Sticky Fingers blog, Coke invited to Cain to promote the calculator, which tells users the amount of exercise someone has to do to burn off the calories in a can of Coke, via a photography competition after discover Cain was a keen photographer.

Cain said Tuke’s personal approach mean she went "above and beyond" what Coke asked of her, and criticised brands who take a more generic approach.

She said: "I can’t tell you how many emails I get that starts with ‘dear blogger’. Those go straight in the bin."

Cain cited research that claims mum bloggers receive approximately 90 generic emails a day and only go on to work with 8% of those people, but in contrast, more personal emails have a 52% success rate.

The three top mistakes marketers make when working with bloggers were "expecting bloggers to work for free", "never getting back to a blogger after an initial reply" and "expecting them to review a product they have never tried or tested", according to the research.

Cain claimed she would not blog about a product she had not tried and said not replying to a blogger is damaging for the brand, because bloggers are "sociable" people and will talk about the experience on social media.